Page 117 of Doomsdate

I nod quickly. “I know, I know.”

With Gramps hunched forward at the waist, Everett wraps his arms around his torso from behind, then drags him over to the foot of the stairs. I pick up Gramps’s legs and together we heave him up, step by step, the short flight to the hatch. I hate this. I hate every part of it. I hate that we have to leave him outside for the night, that the swarm might have their way with him before it’s safe enough to bury him. But Everett is right, and Gramps died to protect me from himself. It would be wrong to ignore that sacrifice. It would be stupid.

When we reach the top, Everett pauses, panting from exertion, to listen. “Do you hear something?”

Chicken vocalizes deep in her throat from below. “I hear Chicken. I hear…” I hold my breath, straining to sense whatever’s waiting on the other side of the iron hatch.

A cracked, croupy sound rumbles between us. Too close.

I suck in air, and it tastes like ruin.

“Gramps?”

The body’s chin jerks up, its bulging eyes bright, opalescent, unseeing. Everett curses, shoving straight upward as though his stooped shoulders could lift the heavy hatch on their own, arms still wrapped around Gramps’s torso.

“Maisie, hurry!”

I let go of the legs and fumble for the Taser strapped to my hip. It thrums to life, but I hesitate. Some horrible, grieving, furious part of me hesitates. I had exactly one person in my life, one, before I met Everett. One friend. One family member. One person who cared if I lived or died or even got a haircut. Only one. But maybe that’s all I get. The universe decided one’s my limit. First Mom, then Gramps, and now that I’ve found Everett, the universe is settling the bill.

Gramps lurches for me, but my body feels strangely frozen, as though pain’s rendered my matter inert.

“Maisie!” Everett shrieks again, tugging Gramps away from me.

Gramps’s open mouth finds Everett’s arm instead.

He bites. Blood spurts.

I scream.

Everett

There’s nothing so heavy as dead weight. A body no longer engaged in the fight to hold itself up, to breathe, to walk through this world and live within it. You don’t realize how much a person weighs on your life until they’re no longer able to bear their weight, and it falls to you instead to hold it all. The weight of your love for them. The weight of your grief now that they’re gone. The weight of their absence. It all combines to bring you, staggering, to your knees. Some never stand up again. I didn’t think I could.

I think about dead weight now as Maisie, sobbing, sends the electrical current into Gramps’s heart. His heavy, lifeless body slumps in front of mine. He smells like Old Spice and campfires. He smells like blood. I think of his dead weight on Maisie, and I want to cry. She risked so much to be here.

The room spins.

I grab my arm, the area throbbing and raw. Pull away fingers coated in red. More comes.

He bit me.

How much time do I have?

He bit me. I just found her, and—

He bit me. Will she have to bear the dead weight of us both?

“I’m so sorry, so sorry.” The words leave my mouth, slurred. Am I dying? Turning already? Darkness crowds my vision, and all I see is her. My beautiful, strong Maisie, surrounded by the encroaching black.

She’s crying, saying my name. I can’t hear her, but I see her mouth moving along the familiar syllables. Cold pressure against my arm. “Don’t let me hurt anyone, Maisie.” I reach for her face, but it’s far away. “Promise.”

I slip into the darkness, my heart still reaching for what my hands can’t hold.

Voices.

“How much time has elapsed since the bite?”

“Seventeen minutes.” Maisie’s back is to me. Bars separate us.